Swim club honors Nakama
By Seabrook Mow
Special to The Advertiser
He may not have been the most recognizable figure strolling around the Palolo Recreation Pool, but Keo Nakama was never far from people's thoughts.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
"He's cool," said Helena Suehiro, 16. "He does have a meet dedicated to him."
Fans and well-wishers line up to meet Keo Nakama during the 53rd Keo Nakama Invitational swim meet.
Suehiro was one of 550 club swimmers participating in the 53rd Keo Nakama Swimming Invitational, a three-day meet that attracts top swimmers from Hawai'i and the Mainland.
While the event honors one of Hawai'i's swimming legends, it also gives youths from the Islands a chance to square off with Mainland swimmers.
"Number one, it lets the kids know the tradition in Hawai'i swimming and they get the experience to swim against people from other counties," said Iolani's intern swim coach, Bobby Brewer, a former national 100 backstroke champion and Olympic trials competitor.
"This event exposes them (children) to a lot of different cultures; to show them that there's more then Hawai'i," Reid Yamamoto, a coach at Hawai'i Swim Club said.
Brewer, like many people, know Nakama by name and reputation, but have never actually met the 81-year-old.
Nakama tries to avoid the spotlight and is now just another spectator at the meet.
He even goes as far as saying, "I'm just too afraid to tell them to name the event after someone else."
That isn't likely to happen, though.
"But without an event like this, people would forget who Keo Nakama was," said meet Keith Arakaki, the director and a swim coach for Hawai'i Swim Club.
While the Nakama meet may be held in a pool, it's not where Nakama first learned to swim.
Nakama learned to swim in an irrigation ditch in Pu'un«n«, Maui.
"We would swim from bridge to bridge," said Nakama. The distance between each bridge was about 50 meters, and he was swimming against the current.
The preparation would pay off in his competitive years.
Arakaki recalled a story about Nakama, also his first swim coach, in a race against a U.S. Olympic champion Ralph Gilman in the 30s. Gilman was visiting Hawai'i for an exhibition meet.
"Keo Nakama (in this late teens) stepped up to the block, Gilman (in his twenties) was 6-feet 3-inches and Nakama was 5-5. They had a good race for about 300 meters and Nakama pulled through the last 20 meters of the event and beat this Olympic star. And this was a nobody (Nakama) from the plantation."
Nakama twice missed his opportunity for the Olympics in the 40s. The first was a result of World War II, and the second one was because of a "funny kind of rule," he said. "They said when I taught (Nakama was a physical education teacher) I was already a professional."
But even without the Olympics, "Swimming has been very nice to me, I got to travel all around the world," he said.
In addition, he was the first person to swim the 27-mile Kaiwi channel between Moloka'i and O'ahu.
"What Mr. Nakama did was so phenomenal and we hold this event to honor him and remind the kids and the parents of the achievement that he did," Arakaki said.
